On this day, May 22nd 2007, the Canberra Times reported on an announcement by two big coal miners that they were going to build a “carbon capture and storage” plant by 2014. Oh yes.
Dobbin, M. 2007. BP, Rio in clean coal power bid; Project based on Canberra research. Canberra Times, 22 May.
BP and Rio Tinto announced joint plans yesterday for a $2billion coal- fired power station at Kwinana in Western Australia that would be the first in Australia to capture and store its greenhouse gas emissions deep underground. The so-called clean coal station which could be completed within seven years would produce enough power to supply 500,000 houses.
Why this matters
When we hear the latest promises, we should
a) remember the old ones
b) think about hype cycles
What happened next
It. didn’t. happen. Because the taxpayer wasn’t willing to stump up….
Anon. 2007. CO2 trading no solution. Canberra Times, 27 May. L AST week’s announcement that BP and Rio Tinto have teamed up to look at building a ”clean” coal power station in Western Australia is great news. There’s only one catch. The project won’t go ahead if it depends on the key proposal to encourage clean energy contained in a report due to be handed to the Prime Minister on Thursday. This need not pose an insuperable barrier. But it suggests the Government will have to do more than simply rely on setting up a market for trading greenhouse gas emissions, which the report, from a joint business/public service task group, is expected to recommend. The idea is to issue a limited number of permits to release greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which the Government says contributes to global warming. These permits will then be traded in a government-run market designed to create a price which is supposed to increase the cost of emitting high levels of greenhouse gases when products such as electricity are made. According to a spokesman for Rio Tinto, Ian Head, ”An emissions-trading scheme alone will not be enough to encourage the clean coal project in Western Australia to go ahead”